 Alright so I've decided to forego a traditional review for Wolfenstein 2 despite me saying a few times that I plan to do it because a couple things have happened here and it's not that I'm for those that are thinking I'm not doing a traditional review because I'm afraid to talk about negative aspects of the game that is not true at all and we're gonna be talking about some of that in this video but it's because I figured you know what this game came out last year at this point if you want to know what Wolfenstein 2 is you'll already know and even for Switch owners you don't need me to explain what Wolfenstein is. It is a sequel to another Wolfenstein game and at this point if you want to know what Wolfenstein is there are zillions of reviews out there both of the Switch version which I don't think need to be there in terms of telling you what the game is and both of just like digital foundry's analysis of how Switch compares to say Xbox One X and stuff like that and then on top of that obviously reviews of the original game from last year so I'm not gonna do a traditional review for this game because it doesn't feel like it's a game that needs a traditional view like Mario Tennis Aces did which is a brand new game so I think it's actually something I'm gonna hold myself to moving forward is when I plan to do reviews of games it's going to be of brand new titles and then titles like Wolfenstein 2 I want to do something more akin to this which is a conversation about my thoughts about this game after spending some actual time with it not not in a cramped space in you know at E3 not just in portable mode but also in docked mode and then talk about its greater impact on what Switch is and what Switch can have in terms of games in the future because you guys remember obviously a recent popular rant video I did talked about how Switch is not going to be getting full AAA support for basically the lifetime of the system and there's a copious amount of reasons from that some that are Nintendo's fault some that are third-party's fault and some that are just maybe even a technical impossibility and it's very frustrating to me as someone who would like to have all these games on the go that that's the case and I feel like Wolfenstein 2 is a good examination of why that is because on the surface there's two ways I really look at Wolfenstein 2 in my experience with it and just just to get this out there right now Wolfenstein 2 is a very very good video game and I don't know why it didn't sell very well last year I don't know if it just released at a bad time or if its name doesn't have enough clout I don't know I really hope it sells well on Switch because it deserves a lot more attention than it's gotten since it came out but that's neither here nor there what I want to talk about here is my feelings on this game and how it runs on Switch and what this means for games in the future because the thing is is as I said there's two ways to look at this one way is you could say this is the most impressive Switch port there is of a current generation game mother because I think about current gen games that have been port and I'm not talking about remasters because those obviously have their own their own little things to take into consideration like the LA Noir remaster you know might not be as impressive as the current remaster it's just an older game anyways so I don't feel like that's a good comparison point I feel like comparing this to Doom and then comparing this is something like NBA 2k18 we could talk with WWE 2k18 if you want but I feel like that is just a mute point because if there ever was an unplayable triple-A game on Nintendo it's WWE 2k18 but yeah here's the thing it's very impressive what this game does on Switch in terms of maintaining a vast majority of the visual elements that were present in the original game and I'm gonna put a link down to the digital foundry analysis that goes way more in-depth on the differences between the Switch version and say the top-end console version which is on Xbox one X and you'll find that you know basically the differences are mostly resolution based and frame rate based and that there's a couple visual tweaks especially with water and then adding a wall in the city that that kind of makes rendering a little easier just some little visual tricks like that but for the most part the thing that's impressive about Wolfenstein 2 and why even even digital foundry was very impressed is that this is the entire game in the visual style presentation that they intended full particle effects they didn't get rid of shadows they just reduced them all the textures are there they just reduced the quality of those textures which is why the game file probably shrunk 30 gigs is because when you go from 1080p and 4k level textures down to textures that look like they're already sub HD textures you know that really reduces file size a lot all the visual elements are there all the guns are there none of the content has been cut all the enemies are there you'd even think the difficulty has even been tweaked not necessarily to be easier but to be more fluid and more understandable so you can actually feel a difference in difficulty going from each difficulty setting on up I have tested out every single difficulty setting needless to say I'm not extremely good at these kind of games because I don't play a lot of them so I'm basically playing on baby mode at this point moving forward so I because I really love the story the story is great but so I just want to experience the story then I'll go back through and I'll start ramping up difficulty and and doing more because I tried the hardest difficulty I could because you can't do the absolute hardest difficulty I don't think until you can beat the game that's like that in some other games I haven't beaten the game yet so I'm assuming that's when it unlocks but either way the difficulty level just below that's already insanely difficult that's fine all the difficulty settings are there the frame rate itself seems to be a much more steady not only did I observe this myself digital foundry confirmed that basically for a vast majority of the game I would say probably 80% or so the game basically stays at 29 or 30 FPS which is massive improvement over over what doom did doom had frequent dips down to the low 20s and even occasionally in the teens I can say that I haven't experienced any dip down into the teens but obviously when you get into the open city environment as the total foundry pointed out the game doesn't hit 30 FPS either regularly runs between like 22 and 26 FPS thankfully it doesn't seem to dip down into the teens there either but it just kind of lives in that zone in that more open area and with tons of enemies on screen like at one point I had seven eight nine enemies on screen and someone in my live stream this was oh man look at that leg but that was actually just a stream glitch my game on my end did not lag in that point it was still a solid 30 FPS is what I'm saying there so that's great and my thing is when you look at it in that light it makes anything seem possible right you're talking about a current gen one of the most impressive visually looking current gen games of all time having no in terms of visual compromises that are unreasonable running on switch but then there's a 30 FPS that makes it seem like everything in the world is possible there's the other side of the coin and this is where this is where a lot of the people who are gonna hate on this port are going to really hammer home the game oftentimes drops down to resolutions of 680 540 and even substandard death at 320 yes this happens a lot this happens a lot a lot a lot the 320 res is not as noticeable on handheld because of the shrunk down screen but you can still tell as digital found recalls it it's a very blurry game and I I agree it's very very blurry at many times and this isn't to say the game is not worth playing on switch I'm gonna tell you right now I'm gonna be playing this game a ton because I'm having fun and I have a rant on this coming later so I don't want to dive too deep into what matters the most in gaming and I'm not gonna say the resolution and frame rates irrelevant but what I am going to say is this also does possibly show the technical limitations of the switch and while we've seen resolutions drop below HD before in other games and other games like Super Mario Odyssey that runs at 60 FPS can't even hit 1080p I feel like I'm not sure where this game puts things in perspective for me for future triple A games on switch because a lot of the things they chose not to sacrifice in the game could have gave them more GPU headroom and would have allowed them to have a higher frame rate and or a higher resolution but they chose not to not to do it they could have got rid of shadows entirely not saying that's ideal but they could have did that motion blur is completely unavailable to disable and for those who don't know motion blur actually has adds a heavy top-end CPU text so if they would get rid of motion blur which some people don't even like motion blur in the first place they would have got rid of that that alone could have actually saved some some headroom and allowed the game to run at higher resolutions more often and little tweaks here and there see the thing is panic button who ported the game chose to try to keep the game as close to the visual presentation as possible and they did a very very good job and it's really impressive they did so but personally this is why I've been arguing really since fire and memorials came out that I wish games would do two different modes basically a 30 FPS in a 60 FPS mode or in the case of something like Wolfenstein 2 where I don't even think 660 FPS is even attainable I feel like it should be a visual quality mode versus maybe resolution mode if that makes sense to me right like here you could try to keep the visual identity as close as possible and deal with lower resolutions and lower frame rates or you can have a more consistent frame rate and higher resolutions but get rid of some of the visual elements in fact what they should allow you to do and this is just me throwing this out there for anyone who's in the AAA space looking to make games give people options that you have on PC so here's your baseline options and then allow people to lower those options and toy around things if they want to get the game to run the way that they wanted to run if people don't mind Wolfenstein the way it is now they can keep it that way if they want higher resolutions here's shaders and lighting and other things you could disable to maybe get that resolution bump to be more consistently at 720 and above but that's just me right like I'm not sure what you guys are thinking but that's my thought process here because Wolfenstein 2 a fantastic game whether you're playing on Xbox one X PC PlayStation 4 or you're playing it on switch it's a good game irregardless of what the resolution hits and what the frame rate hits and people different people are going to say that different frame rates are playable for me growing up a lot of games were very very playable at 15 FPS if today that's like unheard of 15 FPS is just terrible and frame rate obviously I'd rather have it 60 and rather have you know 4k resolution let alone 720p and 1080p but the reality is that I just played Wolfenstein 2 today while I was going to the bathroom like just just thinking about that I took a dog for a walk today and I played Wolfenstein 2 while I was on a walk like these these scenarios just weren't even possible a few days ago unless you had a review copy of Wolfenstein 2 so yeah I'm at this point it's what sacrifices are acceptable to you guys in order to have the convenience of being able to play Wolfenstein 2 and other AAA games anywhere to me I am fine with the sacrifices made in this game you have been watching footage of this throughout hopefully I have some handheld footage in there as well so you can kind of compare and contrast that but I just think that Wolfenstein 2 is just a brilliant a brilliant case study of what's possible on switch why any AAA game can run on switch depending on the sacrifices and if any of you guys out there are just like look it looks like crap 3 3 you know 320 360p whatever lolol 30 FPS lol that's fine like go play the game on this on the platforms you want but I think for a lot of people who own switch and I could say this safely because of what my fiancee said my fiance after I got done with the stream last night and got done playing it although I played a little bit on handheld in bed she's just like man this game looks good see people that are oblivious to better options out there or have no interest in those options are going to think the switch version is amazing so it's one of those things where remember your audience remember not everybody cares about the same thing that everybody else cares about and at the end of the day I do think this means we're not going to get a lot of AAA games I stand by what I said but it is nice to see that it is possible to have these kind of games it's just a matter of if developers are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get them on switch in a form that's just not going to be visually impressive anyways folks I'm with any rubber jams from Nintendo Prime if you like this video you know what to do and if you dislike the video hit that dislike buddy be sure to let me know what you think about Wolfenstein 2 and other other AAA games coming to switch in the comments below I'll catch you guys in the next one